The essential love of God is unlocked in the little Jesus-Child: and all the greatest things are also wrought by God only in the spiritually little.

The Hundred and Thirty-fourth Letter.

The essential love of God is unlocked in the little Jesus-Child: and all the greatest things are also wrought by God only in the spiritually little.

Beloved brother!

Your agreeable letter, written in the Christmas-night, I received only yesterday, and answer it in the New-Year's night. Yea, it is Love that has brought us the Christ-Child, as you rightly write; for He has brought Himself unto us, that is, the essential Love, the heart and center of the love of God. In the little heart of our little Jesus (o wonder!) is the immeasurable sea, the infinite glow of the divine love unlocked, but not locked in and bolted, but openly offered.

The love of God in all the saints of heaven and of earth is nothing else than lively little sparks, kindled from and sprung from this great fire. And ah! that our dead and cold heart also, where it is not kindled, might yet be warmed a little thereby! What counsel? Our little Child shares Himself wholly with the little children: Down then toward Bethlehem, to the stall, into the withdrawnness, into the simplicity, lowliness, littleness and poverty! &c. Whoso becomes a child, he finds this Child, and with Him all salvation. How utterly otherwise are yet God's ways than our ways? So many thousand years, from the beginning, had God comforted His people upon a serpent-treader, Savior and Helper. This great Prophet and Messiah was so innumerable times promised, prefigured and foretold; everything aimed, everything hoped upon Him; everyone longed with pains after Him. But what comes of it at last? A poor little child is born in the stillness, at a mean and forgotten place, &c. Parturiunt montes, the poor reason might well think thereby.

Ah! so it still goes. The divine power of faith, the essential redemption from all sins, the thorough sanctification after the image of God, &c. where then shall all these great things be found and fulfilled? Answer. In a little child. O thou dear childhood of Jesus, become also wholly ours with all thy properties, and take us away from our wandering, self-clever reason, Amen!

This be wished unto us for the New Year, dear brother! God grant that the time which may be granted us of it may through His grace be better employed than all the former! Behold, here to that end our motto, or rather the rule of our occupations: Pauca Capitula, simplici stylo, ad evitandam curiositatem, & ne quis dimittat interiorem sanctitatem. Vid. Weism. H. E. sæculo, ni fallor, XIII. in Edmund. Cantuar. Vale in Domino: & memento fratris tui, tecum. A student of genuine theology.

German

Der hundertundvierunddreißigste Brief.

Die wesentliche Liebe GOttes ist in dem kleinen JEsus-Kind aufgeschlossen: und alle die größste Sachen werden von GOtt auch nur in den geistlich Kleinen gewirkt.

Geliebter Bruder!

Dein Angenehmes, in der Christ-Nacht geschrieben, habe erst gestern erhalten, und beantworte es in der Neu-Jahrs-Nacht. Ja, Liebe ist es, die uns das Christ-Kindlein mitgebracht hat, wie du recht schreibest; denn er hat sich selbst uns mitgebracht, d. i. die wesentliche Liebe, das Herz und Centrum der Liebe GOttes.

— Opening lines of the original German. The complete transcription of all 605 letters appears in the forthcoming Encounter Press critical edition; Brief 1 is shown in full as a sample.

German text: public domain (1773–75 first edition / 1845 Gesammelte Schriften).